Tuesday saw the launch of Meta Platforms’ (META.O) Quest Pro virtual and mixed reality headgear, which was a significant step for CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s entry into the higher-end market for extended reality computing products.
The $1,500 headgear, which was shown at Meta’s annual Connect conference, will be available to buy on October 25 and will let users to interact with digital creations that are superimposed over a view of their immediate surroundings in full color.
The launch is a significant step for Zuckerberg, who last year announced plans for the device, then known as Project Cambria, at the same time that he changed the name of his business from Facebook to Meta. He did this to signal his intention to refocus the social media giant into a company that runs the metaverse, a shared immersive computing experience.
Since then, Zuckerberg has invested billions of dollars in that idea. The Meta division Reality Labs, which created the metaverse, lost $10.2 billion in 2021 and has lost about $6 billion so far this year.
According to executives speaking at the press conference, Meta intends to market the Quest Pro first through consumer channels while introducing enterprise-level features like mobile device management, authentication, and premium support services in the following year.
They said that rather than replacing the entry-level Quest 2, which costs $399.99, the gadget is meant to supplement it.
That implies that, for the time being, the Quest Pro does not support the sophisticated commercial applications that Meta has said it would like its metaverse technology to enable.
The business is currently developing Magic Rooms, a type of mixed reality experience for its Horizon Workrooms software that would allow users to see their avatars in actual conference rooms with other users.
According to Zuckerberg, it also has plans to give its avatars, which are presently only visible from the waist up, legs.
Nevertheless, the Quest Pro is far less expensive than other enterprise-oriented gadgets like Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) Hololens 2, which was made available for purchase in 2019 and is now in use in operating rooms and on manufacturing floors.
The starting price of a Hololens 2 is $3,500.
